It is generally accepted that in cognatic societies like those in Borneo
there can be no stable and exclusive corporate group based on kinship.
Instead, an ego-centered category of kindred has been considered to play
a main role in forming various kinds of occasional action group.
However, we do not have much data on how kindred is activated to form
action groups such as work groups in cultivation, hunting or feast
hosting. Nor have we fully explored alternative social networks which
can be used for organizing or structuring cognatic societies. In this article
I describe the gift-exchange and social networks observed in a
funerary ritual among one of the cognatic societies of Borneo, namely,
the Murut society of Sabah, East Malaysia. By examining these I argue
that there are two different kinds of gift-exchange, an irreversible unequal
bridewealth/food exchange between wife-taker and wife-giver and a
reciprocal equal gift-exchange between longhouses or villages, and that
these constitute the basic principles in forming wide and deeply infiltrated
social networks among Murut society.
ボルネオ・ムルット社会の葬礼に見られる贈与交換と社会関係
KH_021_3_001.pdf
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